Fear of Invasion

At the end of the nineteenth century, the nations of Europe were divided into strategic alliances that pitted them against each other in the event of a war. From 1882 onward, these military associations resulted in a greater military buildup than the world had ever known before. The proof that this trend created a dangerous political situation can be seen in the fact that it ended in the largest and bloodiest confrontation that had ever happened up to that time, the Great War.

The roots of this division of Europe came in 1871, when Prussia conquered France. Prussia, the kingdom state that included Germany, sought to prevent France from coming back at some future time to take back the land that had been taken from it by forming alliances with first Austria-Hungary and, later, Russia. By the 1880s, Germany had signed on to a Triple Alliance with...